WSJ : Web Pioneer Keeps Faith, and Cash, in Bitcoin

Web Pioneer Keeps Faith, and Cash, in Bitcoin

Marc Andreessen Is Betting on Wide Adoption of Digital Currency Bitcoin

Internet pioneer Marc Andreessen is doubling down on bitcoin amid turbulence in the virtual-currency world, in a bet that widespread adoption of the currency will fuel the growth of new businesses and technologies.

Venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, where Mr. Andreessen is a co-founder and partner, has made about $50 million of investments in the area—believed to be more than any other firm—from a $1.5 billion fund, the firm says. The Palo Alto, Calif., firm plans to invest hundreds of millions of additional dollars over the next few years from other funds, people familiar with the firm say.

Mr. Andreessen says he is convinced of the bright outlook for digital currencies despite setbacks such as the collapse last month of Tokyo-based Mt. Gox, one of the most prominent bitcoin exchanges, which said it lost hundreds of millions of dollars worth of the virtual currency. "I'm completely unfazed and plan to invest more," he said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.

The move exposes Mr. Andreessen, best known for co-founding Netscape Communications more than two decades ago, and his investors to greater risks amid uncertainty over the future of bitcoin. The currency isn't backed by a government but recently has become popular among technology enthusiasts, trading at various times over the past year for less than $100 and more than $1,100. It traded Friday at around $580.

For all of Mr. Andreessen's enthusiasm, some bitcoin fans aren't thrilled with the interest by venture capitalists and worry about the encroachment of big business. Bitcoin allows users to transfer money—or other items, like legal contracts—without an intermediary such as a bank.

"You've got a bunch of bitcoiners and young libertarians who don't have enough confidence and life experience," says Cody Wilson, a founder of Dark Wallet, which seeks to enhance anonymity within digital-currency networks. "So they are being lulled into the [venture capitalist] set in California and New York. There's just not enough confidence to go against the grain and question the whole goddamn thing."

And there is skepticism among other investors.

"For 99% of people, bitcoin doesn't solve any problem they have," says Bradley Golding, a managing director at New York investment firm Christofferson, Robb & Co., which specializes in investing in financial companies and has decided not to invest in bitcoin-related companies. "Most people are comfortable going to their bank, making a deposit and using a credit card…It's a solution in search of a problem."

Initially, Mr. Andreessen and his partners at Andreessen Horowitz were skeptical the world of virtual currencies held attractive investments. Even if they could discover ways to bet on the area, Mr. Andreessen figured it would be a challenge gaining the support of the firm's investors, including institutions such as Princeton University and the Ford Foundation.

Further muddying the picture for some conservative investors, many fans of these digital currencies were eager to replace governments and other institutions, and some proponents seemed to rely on digital currencies to enable unlawful activities.

By last April, however, Mr. Andreessen decided it was time to approach his firm's investors about bitcoin. He waited until the end of an annual meeting of Andreessen Horowitz's advisory board at the Rosewood Sand Hill hotel in Menlo Park, Calif., to broach the idea.

"At first blush, you're going to think we're out of our minds," Mr. Andreessen says he told the group of five investment firms on the Andreessen Horowitz advisory board, "but we're going to invest in a fake mathematical currency."

The comment met with stone-cold silence, before a brief discussion ensued. Some investors seemed intrigued, but many had little idea what bitcoin was.

Ultimately, Mr. Andreessen said investor resistance was less than he feared. Venture-capital firms have free rein to make almost any kind of investment. Their investors generally anticipate about half the investments will be losers, while some others will be home runs.

So far, Andreessen Horowitz has invested $25 million in Coinbase, which creates digital wallets, and a smaller amount in Ripple, a payment system, among other investments, according to Andreessen Horowitz.

Along the way, Mr. Andreessen has become one of bitcoin's leading evangelists, writing frequent articles and blog posts about the possibilities of digital currencies. This month, Mr. Andreessen sent Twitter messages calling bitcoin an "important tech breakthrough." He said that "the ideas stand on their own, the math stands on its own, the code stands on its own."

Bitcoin was developed in late 2008 by a person or group called Satoshi Nakamoto. It is an electronic currency that doesn't exist in a physical form. Bitcoin is created by "miners'' as payment for verifying bitcoin transactions using a complicated mathematical algorithm, a process that requires intense computing power.

Mr. Andreessen says bitcoin reminds him of the early days of the Internet.

"I'm having déjà vu," Mr. Andreessen says. Bitcoin is "weird and scary and nerdy, and it's full of scams and frauds, just like the Internet was."

Still, Mr. Andreessen says it took him years to appreciate the business possibilities.

He recalls reading an academic paper in 2009 about the launch of the bitcoin software, which seemed to improve on past related work, such as DigiCash, invented in 1990.

"I'm not a serious mathematician, but I know a lot of really good mathematicians and computer scientists and reached out to them," he says.

Throughout 2010 and 2011, Mr. Andreessen discussed bitcoin's development with Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and others but still didn't think it was an appropriate investment.

Over time, Mr. Andreessen became convinced virtual currencies would enable a huge number of productive endeavors, raising intriguing investment possibilities that he and his colleagues hadn't considered. If an Internet user can transfer digital contracts, signatures, money or other property in a secure fashion, while avoiding the hefty fees of intermediaries such as banks and credit-card companies, bitcoin and other digital currencies will gain mainstream popularity, he says.

When Mr. Andreessen realized more participants would adopt virtual currencies, which in turn would lead to more acceptance, he decided his firm had to act.

"I realized it's a four-sided network effect—users, merchants, miners, developers," he says.

By last spring, it was time to approach Andreessen Horowitz's investors. Over lunch a few weeks after Mr. Andreessen's embrace of bitcoin at the Andreessen Horowitz meeting, Elizabeth Obershaw, a managing director at Horsley Bridge, a San Francisco firm that invests in Andreessen Horowitz, returned to the idea.

"Tell me about that little teaser," Ms. Obershaw, whose interest had been piqued, asked Mr. Andreessen.

Mr. Andreessen began explaining his firm's interest to Ms. Obershaw and other investors.

"I was skeptical," says Andrew Golden, president of the Princeton University Investment Company, which manages the university's endowment and invests in Andreessen Horowitz. But, he says, "This was a smart team telling us we need to look at it in a different way."

Like the Internet, bitcoin will emerge as an accepted technology, Mr. Andreessen argues, as it becomes more regulated and consumers and businesses become more comfortable with the idea of digital currencies. With those changes, he predicts, the subversive politics often associated with the currency will fade.

"We like fringe technologies but not fringe politics," he says.

FT : Europe’s periphery in fundraising rush

Europe’s periphery in fundraising rush

Eurozone governments are taking advantage of unexpectedly low borrowing costs to push ahead with debt issuance, with some countries further ahead in their debt raising plans than in any year since the start of the eurozone crisis.
Across the currency bloc, debt agencies have raised 29 per cent of their estimated 2014 funding goals, according to calculations by Barclays – more than in any year since 2010.

Among the furthest advanced are countries in the region’s crisis-hit periphery. Portugal, for instance, has completed almost half its 2014 funding.
The surge in issuance, which will increase the eurozone’s resilience if fresh financial storms erupt this year, highlights how financing conditions in the region have continued to improve even as the US Federal Reserve has tapered its programme of asset purchases.
Governments are also issuing more longer term debt; the average duration of issuance so far this year is 8.7 years, up from 7.4 years in the same period in 2013, according to separate calculations by Deutsche Bank.
Fundraising in capital markets is typically biased towards the start of the year, but this year’s surge is notable because in aggregate it exceeds even the front-loading in the previous two years, when exceptional factors such as the ECB’s longer-term refinancing operation encouraged governments to issue bonds.
“The market has been good for 12 to 18 months but in reality bankers will still say ‘who knows what might happen later in the year’,” said Huw Worthington, bond strategist at Barclays. “If you look at the interest rates governments are issuing at they are fantastically low historically.”
”Eurozone sovereigns have had a great start to the year,” said Achim Linsenmaier, co-head of sovereign, supranationals and agency syndicate at Deutsche Bank. “Peripheral sovereigns have seen a dramatic improvement – both in terms of the spread [in interest rates over German Bunds] and the type of investors interested in their bonds,”
Yields on eurozone government bonds have fallen at a faster rate than US Treasuries or UK Gilts, reflecting expectations of economic growth and weak inflation, plus the possibility that the ECB may loosen monetary policy further.
Eurozone debt has also become increasingly attractive for investors seeking shelter from turmoil elsewhere in the world.
“Europe has become completely detached from emerging markets – they are almost havens,” added Erik Nielsen, chief economist at UniCredit. “Debt agencies have looked at the yields and thought ‘this is amazing’ – and used the opportunity.”

FT : Germany’s property rush is based on concrete gold

For Germans these days, some things that do not glitter are gold. A property boom across the biggest cities has been dubbed a betongold – literally concrete gold – rush.
In Frankfurt’s well-heeled Westend, Michael Stegerwald has been selling kitchens for two decades. Last year was his most successful yet.
“We’ve had a very special situation here. People are buying more houses and flats,” he said. “And, when they do, they need kitchens.”

In Westend, the most expensive district of Germany’s fifth most populous city, prices rose by almost a quarter between 2011 and 2013 to €6,000 per square metre, according to data from property researchers BulwienGesa. Across Frankfurt they are up by 18 per cent to €4,000 per square metre. An average apartment of around 100 square metres would cost €400,000, up from €340,000 in 2011.
Frankfurt’s boom is symptomatic of cities across the country: in Berlin, prices are up by 14 per cent over the past two years to €3,700 per square metre.
Germany, the eurozone’s economic powerhouse, is famed for its renting culture. But a combination of low interest rates and economic uncertainty stemming from the currency bloc’s twin economic and financial crises are slowly changing that.
“This phrase ‘betongold’ is very common,” Mr Stegerwald said. “People here don’t want to own property. But they now feel they must because there’s no interest on savings. All you can do is buy real or concrete gold.”
Across town and the rest of the country, the European Central Bank has faced savage criticism from the German media for cutting its benchmark main refinancing rate to just 0.25 per cent, penalising a nation that saves 10 per cent of its income. At the same time, it is enabling lenders to offer would-be homeowners the deal of a lifetime on the 10-year fixed-rate mortgages common here.
The hiring of around 1,000 staff for its new supervisory role has added to the ECB’s unpopularity with the city’s residents, who believe these highly paid workers will put additional pressure on property prices.
“The city and region around Frankfurt will profit from the set-up of the single supervisory mechanism,” the ECB said. “Banking supervision will create new jobs in Frankfurt, even beyond the 1,000 employees working directly in supervision, and contribute to the local and regional economy.”
The low savings rates coupled with a so-far unfounded angst over inflation that are pushing some Germans into property are increasing prices more rapidly in cities than the rest of the country. In Germany as a whole, the average house price rose by 31 per cent over the past five years, compared with 42 per cent in the capital.
Cities across Germany are growing. The depopulation of the 1970s, when young families moved out to towns such as Bad Homburg, about 20km north of Frankfurt’s city centre, is reversing. Since the millennium, Frankfurt’s population has risen by 8 per cent to 678,691.
Instead of leaving town, people in their 30s have bought apartments in the city centre and its fringes in previously rundown districts such as the Ostend, home to the ECB’s new headquarters due to open later this year, and Gallus. Families with children, fed up with bad traffic on the daily commute, are staying within the city limits, moving to inner suburbs like Riedberg.
“In the more central locations, you are seeing high demand from singles and high-earning couples,” said Sven Carstensen, manager of BulwienGesa’s Frankfurt office.
Frankfurt’s large expatriate community, the result of its location as a global financial and transport hub, are also flocking to the centre.
Ralf Kröh, owner of Küchenwerk, an upmarket kitchen store located in the shadows of the skyscrapers that house the city’s banks, said: “When I opened for business in 2000, about 90 per cent of my customers were German. Now about half are foreign.” Mr Kröh added: “These people prefer to live in town. Ten years ago, Frankfurt was dead in the evenings. Now it’s improving.”
Foreign investors, particularly from Asia, are also keen to own property in the centre of town, according to Mr Carstensen. The website of Skyline Boulevard, a development project in Gallus, is available in Chinese and English, as well as German.
In Berlin, money has poured in from other parts of the currency bloc. “In the centre, we have a lot of people who are buying an apartment as an investment,” said André Adami, manager of BulwienGesa’s branch in the German capital. “A lot of investors are coming from Spain and Italy. They think Berlin is more stable.”
The rapid rise in property prices across German cities has stoked fears of a bubble.
Like bullion, some think betongold is due a fall. North of Frankfurt’s Westend is the Bundesbank, Germany’s powerful central bank, which earlier this year warned that the properties in the biggest cities were now overvalued by as much as 25 per cent.
Others are more optimistic. “There is not much space here for bigger developments,” Mr Carstensen said. “Frankfurt’s still growing. That will keep prices high, at least in the central locations.”

RTR- NATO commander warns of Russian threat to separatist Moldova region

(Reuters) - NATO's top military commander said on Sunday Russia had built up a "very sizeable" force on its border with Ukraine and Moscow may have a region in another ex-Soviet republic, Moldova, in its sights after annexing Crimea.

Russia was acting more like an adversary than a partner, NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe, U.S. Air Force General Philip Breedlove said, and the 28-nation alliance should rethink the positioning and readiness of its forces in eastern Europe.

Russian troops, using armored vehicles, automatic weapons and stun grenades, seized some of the last military facilities under Ukrainian control on Saturday in Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that Russian President Vladimir Putin formally annexed the day before.

Breedlove was one of several Western officials and politicians to warn on Sunday that Russia may not stop there in a crisis that has taken East-West relations lurching back towards the Cold War since pro-Western protests in Ukraine ousted Moscow-allied President Viktor Yanukovich last month.

"The (Russian) force that is at the Ukrainian border now to the east is very, very sizeable and very, very ready," the NATO commander told an event held by the German Marshall Fund think-tank.

U.S. President Barack Obama's deputy national security adviser Tony Blinken said the build-up might just be aimed at intimidating Ukraine's new pro-Western leaders but that Russia could invade the country's mainly Russian-speaking east. "It's possible that they are preparing to move in," he told CNN.

Russia said it was complying with international agreements and had no plans to invade. It has called the soldiers who took over Ukrainian bases in Crimea "self defense forces".

The United States and the European Union have targeted some of Putin's closest political and business allies with personal sanctions and have threatened broader economic sanctions if Putin's forces encroach on other eastern or southern parts of Ukraine with big Russian-speaking populations.

Ukrainian marine standards were still flying on Sunday alongside the Russian flag at the Crimean base of Ukraine's top military unit in Fedosiya, but the Ukrainian troops were getting ready to leave after the Russian military takeover.

"Our only issue is that we want to leave this place with honor, weapons and vehicles," one Ukrainian soldier said.

Blinken said Washington was considering all requests for military assistance from the government in Kiev, but that it would be unlikely to prevent an invasion of Ukraine, which is not part of NATO. Breedlove said the military alliance needed to think about its eastern members, particularly the former Soviet Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

"We need to think about our allies, the positioning of our forces in the alliance and the readiness of those forces ... such that we can be there to defend against it if required, especially in the Baltics and other places," Breedlove said.

"VERY WORRISOME"

Breedlove said NATO was very concerned about the threat to Transdniestria, which declared independence from Moldova in 1990 but has not been recognized by any United Nations member state. About 30 percent of its half million population is ethnic Russian, which is the mother tongue of an overall majority.

Russia has 440 peacekeepers in Transdniestria plus other soldiers guarding Soviet-era arms stocks.

Russia launched a new military exercise, involving 8,500 artillery men, near Ukraine's eastern border 10 days ago.

"There is absolutely sufficient (Russian) force postured on the eastern border of Ukraine to run to Transdniestria if the decision was made to do that, and that is very worrisome," Breedlove said.

The speaker of Transdniestria's parliament has urged Russia to incorporate the region, which lies to the west of Ukraine. The new leaders in Kiev have said Moscow could seek to link up pro-Russian regions in Moldova and Georgia to Ukraine's east in a destabilizing southern corridor with Crimea in the middle.

Russia's Deputy Defence Minister Anatoly Antonov was quoted by the state's Itar-Tass news agency as saying Russia was complying with international agreements limiting the number of troops near its border with Ukraine.

Moscow's ambassador to the European Union, Vladimir Chizhov,

said Russia did not have "expansionist views". Asked to give a commitment that Russian troops would not move into Ukrainian territory outside Crimea, he told Britain's BBC. "There is no intention of the Russian Federation to do anything like that."

U.S. Senator John McCain, a Republican foreign policy specialist, told the same BBC show that Putin's actions in Ukraine were akin to those of Adolf Hitler in 1930s Germany.

"I think he (Putin) is calculating how much he can get away with, just as Adolf Hitler calculated how much he could get away with in the 1930s," McCain said.

"PANDORA'S BOX"

Germany's Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier underscored the huge potential repercussions of Russia's bid to redraw national borders in Europe.

"I'm very worried the unlawful attempt to alter recognized borders in our European neighbourhood, 25 years after the end of the Cold War, will open Pandora's Box," he said.

Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko, a close ally of Russia, accepted on Sunday that Crimea was now "de facto" a part of Russia, but said the annexation set a "bad precedent".

Speaking to reporters in Minsk, Lukashenko said Ukraine, which shares a long land border with Belarus, should remain "a single, indivisible, integral, non-bloc state".

Western sanctions lost some of their sting on Sunday when Russia's SMP bank, whose main shareholders were targeted by U.S. sanctions, said Visa Inc and MasterCard Inc had resumed payment services for its clients.

The bank said it was glad the two biggest international payments systems had listened to its arguments to reverse Friday's suspension of services as it was wrong to target the bank, which was not itself subject to any sanctions.

A spokesperson for Mastercard confirmed it was again serving clients of the bank but did not say why it reversed its decision. Visa said it had been informed by the U.S. government to lift sanctions against SMP bank and two other Russian banks because they did not meet the criteria for sanctions.

Putin and Russian media had mocked the sanctions, which did not stop the Russian military completing its takeover of Ukraine's military bases in Crimea. Russia's defence ministry said on Sunday that its flag was now flying over 189 Ukrainian military installations on the peninsula.

A referendum held a week ago after Russian troops had seized control of Crimea overwhelmingly backed union with Russia but was denounced by Washington and the European Union as a sham.

The EU emphasized its support for the new pro-Western government in Kiev, signing a political agreement with interim Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk last week.

It also promised financial aid for the government - which Moscow says came to power by a coup to overthrow Yanukovich after he rejected an EU trade deal in favor of closer ties with Russia - as soon as Kiev reaches a deal with the International Monetary Fund. The IMF will report on Tuesday.

RTR- The moving target of target-date funds

(Reuters) - If there has been a grand-slam home run among investment products in recent years, it is the target-date retirement fund.

A one-stop shopping choice for many retail investors, target-date funds allow an investor to pick a retirement date - say 2030 or so - and the mix of underlying investments is adjusted over time to support that goal.

Their popularity has proved eye-popping since they came into vogue, especially since 2006 when they were approved by Congress as default investment options in 401(k) plans. They house more than $582 billion in total assets as of the end of January, according to mutual fund research firm Lipper, a Thomson Reuters company. That includes a fresh $5.1 billion in inflows over January alone.

"Over the last five years, target-date funds have attracted the majority of assets flowing into equity funds," says Tom Roseen, senior analyst at Lipper. "That is an amazing statement."

The reason for this is that a lot of do-it-yourself investors have thrown in the towel, and just want to have their money professionally managed without worrying over how to allocate for themselves, Roseen says.

COMPLICATED GEARS

Like elegant watches, such funds may look simple from the outside, but their insides contain a complicated matrix of interlocking gears. And that accounts for very different results, depending on which target-date fund you are talking about.

One winner of the 2014 U.S. Lipper Fund Awards: Retirement 2015 from Baltimore-based fund shop T. Rowe Price, for those investors on the cusp of retiring. The fund generated returns of 15.18 percent for 2013, throttling category averages over the one-, three- and five-year periods.

But that was just one of a flurry of winners for the T. Rowe Price fund family. They also secured nods for their retirement funds (offered in five-year increments) all the way through 2050.

Think of target-date managers as the mad scientists of the investing world, throwing many different elements into the cauldron. So what's the secret to getting that mix just right?

"Our funds tend to have higher-than-average equity allocation for folks nearing retirement," says Jerome Clark, a portfolio manager who oversees the firm's target-date products. "In this environment, that allocation has boded very well for investors."

The composition of its 2015 fund at the end of 2013 included 40.3 percent domestic stocks and 18.5 percent foreign equities, a healthy percentage that has benefited from a robust stock market. However, it makes for higher-than-average risk in the event of a potential meltdown.

As with other target-date funds, that mix is continuously tweaked, edging toward more conservative investments such as fixed income and cash the closer one gets to retirement.

That so-called glidepath is the key to the success of another fund family in the space, American Funds from the Los Angeles-based Capital Group Companies. In fact, American Funds also hauled in multiple Lipper Awards this year, for funds with retirement target dates all the way through 2055.

"There are two kinds of glidepaths out there," notes Brad Vogt, Capital Group's senior vice president and portfolio manager who helps oversee the firm's target-date offerings. "For some, the investment mix basically fixes at the retirement date. For ours, that mix evolves all the way through retirement, and that approach has worked well for us."

After all, someone retiring at age 65 likely still has a very long road ahead. Average American lifespans have been heading up for decades and are now at 82.2 years for women and 77.4 years for men. This makes "longevity risk" a critical part of portfolio managers' thinking.

"That retiree needs to keep up with inflation, and rising costs for medicine, for housing, for food and travel," Vogt says. "If they have a highly preservation-oriented portfolio of fixed income or cash, they would lose ground. And if you lose ground over 20 years, you really lose ground."

That explains American Funds' relatively high equity allocation, which has helped returns through the robust bull market, notes Lipper's Roseen. Another factor in recent success is that its managers have so far resisted tossing in alternative investments like Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) and commodities.

Many other fund managers in the target-date space have done so, to seek out uncorrelated assets and broader diversification. But those alternative sectors got "clobbered" last year, says Roseen, which benefited American Funds' more streamlined investment mix.

Notably, target-date offerings from T. Rowe Price and American Funds boast expense ratios well below the category average, which has also assisted them in their outperformance. T. Rowe Price's Retirement 2015, for instance, charges an expense ratio of 0.65 percent, which is considered low for a mutual fund.

Of course, not all fund families have been seeing similar success with their target-date fund series. In recent years prominent names like Columbia, Oppenheimer and Goldman Sachs have shuttered their own offerings.

>>> UK's big six energy firms could face threat of break-up this week - UK press

UK's big six energy firms could face threat of break-up this week - UK press
- Energy regulator Ofgem is expected to announce its plans to refer the big six to the new Competition and Markets Authority (CMA); the CMA takes over from the competition commission in Apr and could break apart the big six, resulting in separation of power-generation and retail arms. 
- According to some analysts, the Ofgem referral is likely to make it more difficult for power businesses to raise funds. **Note: The UK big six are: British Gas, EDF Energy, Eon, Npower, Scottish Power and SSE.

>>> Etihad pushing for Air Berlin/Alitalia merger

Etihad pushing for Air Berlin/Alitalia merger
Abu Dhabi-based airline Etihad is pushing for a merger of German Air Berlin and Italian Alitalia, ARD reported. Citing three unidentified sources close to the situation, the German TV broadcaster claimed that the merger talks are at an early stage. The report pointed out that Etihad owns a 30% stake in Air Berlin and plans to acquire a stake in Alitalia shortly. Parties that could complicate the merger include the Italian government and the trade unions, ARD concluded.

Air Berlin has a market cap of EUR 240m.


Source ARD

>>> Dixons Retail plc Dixons, Carphone to request extension for merger negotiati

Dixons Retail plc Dixons, Carphone to request extension for merger negotiations to May - UK press
- Under the rules of the Takeover Panel, companies can request for an extension to the deadline if there is a prospect that a deal can be made. 
- The merger would have over 1,200 shops in Britain, meaning it could be investigated by competition authorities. 
- Both Dixons and Carphone Warehouse declined to comment. 

- 02/24 - DXNS.UK: Notes speculation related to Carphone Warehouse 
- These discussions are at a very preliminary stage and there can be no certainty that a transaction will be forthcoming. 
- No decision has been reached regarding the structuring of any such merger. Accordingly until further notice, for the purposes of the Code, both Dixons and Carphone Warehouse will be treated as offeree companies. 
- As required by Rule 2.6(a) of the Code each of Dixons and Carphone Warehouse are required, by not later than 5.00 p.m. on 24 March 2014, to either announce a firm intention to make an offer for Carphone Warehouse or Dixons (as appropriate) in accordance with Rule 2.7 of the Code or announce that it does not intend to make such an offer, in which case the announcement will be treated as a statement to which Rule 2.8 of the Code applies. Either deadline may be extended with the consent of the Panel in accordance with Rule 2.6(c) of the Code.

>>> Indesit may attract binding offer from Whirlpool

Indesit may attract binding offer from Whirlpool
Whirlpool, the Michigan-based electrical goods producer, is ready to make a binding offer for a strategic stake in Indesit, the listed, Italian white goods group, Italian-language daily Il Sole 24 Ore reported. The report cited market rumours.

The report noted that contrary to expectations Indesit did not appoint an advisor to handle the sale of a strategic stake when its board met yesterday 21 March.

The report said that Indesit presently has a shortlist of four candidates to take a stake in the company: Chinese white goods group Haier, Turkish industrial group Arcelik, German group Bosch and Whirlpool.

Indesit has a market cap of EUR 1.246bn.


Source Il Sole 24 Ore